1957 Gamal Abdul Nasser, President of Egypt 1959, 1960s Norodom Sihanouk, leader of Cambodia

1960 Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem, leader of Iraq

1950s-70s Jose Figueres, President of Costa Rica, two attempts on his life

1961 Francois Papa Doc Duvalier, leader of Haiti 1961 Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo 1961 Gen. Rafael Trujillo, leader of Dominican Republic 1963 Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Vietnam

1960s Fidel Castro, President of Cuba, many attempts and plots on his life

1960s Raul Castro, high official in government of Cuba

1965 Francisco Caamano, Dominican Republic opposition leader

1965-6 Charles de Gaulle, President of France

1967 Che Guevara, Cuban leader

1970 Salvador Allende, President of Chile

1970 Gen. Rene Schneider, C-in-C of Army, Chile 1970s, 1981 General Omar Torrijos, leader of Panama 1972 General Manuel Noriega, Chief of Panama Intelligence

1975 Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire

1976 Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica

1980-1986 Moammar Qaddafi, leader of Libya, several plots and attempts upon his life

1982 Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of Iran

1983 Gen. Ahmed Dlimi, Moroccan Army commander

1983 Miguel dEscoto, Foreign Minister of Nicaragua

1984 The nine comandantes of the Sandinista National Directorate

1985 Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanese Shiite leader (see note below) 1991 Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq

1998 Osama bin Laden, leading Islamic militant

1999 Slobodan Milosevic, President of Yugoslavia

In case they run short of assassins

In 1975, a US Navy psychologist, Lt. Com. Thomas Narut, revealed that his naval work included establishing how to induce servicemen who may not be naturally inclined to kill, to do so under certain conditions. He referred to these men using the words hitmen and assassin . Narut added that convicted murderers as well had been released from military prisons to become assassins. The training of the carefully-selected recruits ranged from dehumanization of the enemy, to acclimating them emotionally through special films showing people being killed and injured in violent ways.3 The disclosure by Narut was pure happenstance. We can only speculate about what programs are taking place or being planned today in that five-sided building in Virginia.

Blasphemy American style

The Western world was shocked when Iran condemned author Salmon Rushdie to death because of his book they called blasphemous . But the United States has also

condemned blasphemers to death-Castro, Allende, Sukarno and a host of others mentioned above who didnt believe in the holy objectives of American foreign policy.

Aberrations?

The senate committee known as the Church Committee, in its Assassination Report in 1975, said: The committee does not believe that the acts [of assassination] which it has examined represent the real American character. They do not reflect the ideals which have given the people of this country and the world hope for a better, fuller, fairer life. We regard the assassination plots as aberrations. 4

At the time the committee wrote this? it knew of about a dozen CIA assassination plots and still could call them all aberrations. Would congressmen today, knowing of the more than 40 incidents listed above, call them all aberrations?

Could they explain how these aberrations have continued through each of the ten presidencies, from Truman through Clinton?

For some years following the Church Committees report, American presidents made it a point to issue public statements on assassination, perhaps trying to convince the world that we really dont mean it .

1976: Ford signed a presidential order which stated: No employee of the United States shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.

1978: Carter also issued an executive order prohibiting assassinaA tions.

1981, December 4: Reagan issued an executive order with language almost identical to that of Fords.

But on November 13, 1984, Reagan, obsessed with fighting the International Communist Conspiracy on several fronts, canceled his executive order, creating what was actually called by the press a license to kill -a license to kill anyone deemed a terrorist .

On April 10, 1985, Reagan canceled the license to kill because the previous month, the CIA had paid some people in Beirut to kill a certain sheikh Fadlallah, who was not to Washingtons liking; a car bomb had been used and 80 people were killed, the sheikh not being among their number.

August 11, 1985: The license to kill was reinstated because of the hijacking of a TWA plane in June.

May 12, 1986: A new executive order was signed without the controversial language, apparently in deference to congressional objections. 5

Clearly, Reagan was not acting out of any principle for or against assassination-it was all public relations, and the actual American policy in the field over the years, in all likelihood, has never varied to speak of, whatever the official PR message of the day coming out of the White House was.

October 13, 1989: Bush added a new PR twist. He issued a memorandum of law that would allow accidental killing if it was a byproduct of legal action: A decision by the President to employ overt military force ...would not constitute assassination if U.S. forces were employed against the combatant forces of another nation, a guerrilla force, or a terrorist or other organization whose actions pose a threat to the security of the United States. 6 In other words, assassination was okay as long as we said oops!

Clinton, it appears, has not issued any official statement concerning US government policy on assassination.

The Doolittle Report

A 1954 White House commission to study the CIAs covert activities included in its report the following now-famous passage, which is relevant to this discussion of assassination. It may be what psycholo-gists call projection .

It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.7

Does it work both ways?

If the United States can bomb Iraqi intelligence headquarters-which was their target in the bombing referred to above-because of an alleged assassination plot against an American leader, and cite self-defense under the UN charter as Washington did (a claim at least as questionable as the alleged plot), think of the opportunities opened to countries like Panama, Libya and Cuba to name but a few. Cuba could claim the right to bomb CIA headquarters, many times, not to mention Miami. Its safe to say, though, that neither the White House nor American courts would accept this legal argument; nor would they be able to see behind the Irony Curtain.